Nvidia is set to unveil its answer to AMD's Smart Access Memory (SAM) technology at CES tomorrow. The technology, known as resizable BAR, is claimed to enable performance gains similar to AMD SAM using Nvidia GPUs as well as Intel CPUs. Nvidia is also expected to unveil its new Ampere-based RTX 30 series mobile GPUs tomorrow.

As previously mentioned, the so-called resizable BAR feature has actually been part of the PCI Express specification for several years; like AMD's SAM, its main purpose is not to be limited to accessing 256MB chunks at a time, but rather to access the increase system (and thus CPU) access to the full graphics frame buffer.

In our tests, SAMs have achieved performance gains of up to 10%, with typical gains in the low single-digit percentage range. Until now, SAM has been associated with AMD's latest Ryzen 5000 CPU and Radeon RX 6000 GPU combination, which is quite exotic and almost impossible to achieve nowadays, especially thanks to the lack of supply of AMD's RX 6000 graphics cards.

Nvidia's plan, however, is to open the resizable bar to PC platforms running Intel CPUs and PCI Express Gen 3.0 as well. For once, Nvidia seems to be taking a more democratic approach to the technology; according to a tweet from WCCFTech's hardware editor, the new feature will be announced at CES tomorrow for the RTX 30 series GPUs.

As for Nvidia's new mobile GPUs, as spotted by Sweclockers, Nvidia's promo sizzle for tomorrow's CES event shows a glimpse of what looks like a laptop and a mobile GPU. So it seems likely that tomorrow will be the full reveal of the Ampere GPU for mobile use.

We have already detailed the likely specs, but the branding and specs of the new RTX 30 series mobile GPUs do not appear to match the desktop GPUs at all. For example, we expect the top chip of the RTX 3080 Mobility to be based on the GA104 die, rather than the beastly GA102 chip at the heart of the desktop RTX 3080.

The mobile 3080 is said to be a fully unlocked version of the GA104 die, packing 6,144 CUDA cores, as opposed to the desktop 3080's 8,704 cores. given how much power the RTX 3080 will require on the desktop, the GA 102 GPUs have proven unsuitable for inclusion in laptop PCs, it is not surprising.

In any case, we can expect to see a fairly broad range of mobile GPUs, with the RTX 3080 at the top of the list, up to the RTX 3060, which is likely to be based on a smaller GA 106 chip.